Medical procedures often involve injecting a patient with multiple different fluids through a needle, catheter, or some similar patient delivery mechanism. Some medical procedures benefit from the ability to inject multiple fluids without disconnecting the patient delivery mechanism. One such medical procedure is angiography. Angiography is a medical imaging procedure used to visualize the inside of blood vessels and organs of the body. Often, angiography is used to detect blocked or narrowed blood vessels, typically in and around a patient's heart. Angiographic procedures require the injection of r radiographically opaque contrast medium (also commonly referred to as contrast agents) into a patient's vascular system. In angiography, the contrast agent is injected into the vascular system through a catheter positioned near the area of interest within the patient's body. The contrast agent is added to the blood to make the vessels visible on the x-ray images taken once the contrast agent is administered.
The contrast agent is normally injected from a manually-operated syringe into an attached medical manifold, which provides fluidic connections to a catheter, contrast agent supply, and often a saline solution supply. Connections between the manifold, syringe and catheter are typically made with a threaded connector, typically a Luer Taper connector.
Commonly used medical manifold include multiple individual valves for each fluid source connected to the manifold. For example, in a typical angiographic procedure the contrast fluid, saline, and patient delivery mechanism will each have at least one valve associated with each respective connection to the manifold. The procedure requires the physician to properly open and close each individual valve in the proper sequence.